Unkel Wines + Luta
Upper Moutere, Nelson, NZ

“I was drawn into the winemaking world by my obsession with how things smell – I was even considering perfumes, but in the end, winemaking won,” Rob Burley laughs about his start in the wine industry.

Accompanied by his high school sweetheart turned wife Kate, the energetic New Zealander started an exciting odyssey that eventually led them back to the land they love. Their first globetrotting steps led from their native Tauranga to Australia, where Rob finished his winemaking degree and started working for big wineries, which “nearly drained the passion out of me. Luckily, a friend introduced me to wines of people like Saša Radikon or Jean-Francois Ganevat back then,” Rob recalls.

Happy to delve deeper into this re-found world of scents and flavours, the couple went overseas – traveling around Eastern Europe and helping harvest in the Loire Valley before ending up in Terroirs, the dearly departed natural wine lovers’ den in central London. Although working in the highly popular wine bar eventually made him realise that “working in hospo isn’t really my thing”, the gig led him to meet Patrick Sullivan, which eventually encouraged the couple to return back to Australia, and Rob back to winemaking in 2015.

Rob began working full-time for the inimitable Pat Sullivan & Bill Downie while making his own wine on the side – Unkel’s baby steps. “Being so close to Melbs’ vibrant food scene was a good way to start a brand, but I was kind of buying fruit from many different places and didn’t really like that. In the end, we felt the need to go back to New Zealand and start farming our own fruit, in a land that we feel way more connected and emotionally attached to,” they explain.

After a bit of searching for a spot to settle in, the couple got a tip about a vineyard block to lease in Bronte, South Island, from their friend Alex Craighead, the owner and winemaker of Kindeli.

The Moutere area is quite a gem wine-wise, especially in the upper part where the Burleys are. “You get cold nights and a bit more gravel in the soil compared to the lower parts, meaning more acidity and finesse in the wine, which is exactly what we were looking for,” Rob nods.

Since the 2020 vintage, Rob’s dream of farming their own fruit has come true: he’s now proudly taking care of 5 hectares of 25-year-old dry-farmed organic vines on a gentle north-facing slope. The soils, termed “Moutere Clays” are a gravel threaded clay formed by an ancient river system flowing into the Tasman Bay. The resulting wines are bursting with life, bright acidity & energy that speak of their honest farming.